Slightly better than its predecessor if only by virtue of the cast and crew actually venturing outside, JAMES BANDE CONTRE O. S. SEX 69 is just as inane as the original but improves on it slightly with more attractive performers and locations.
Blessed with a narrator this time, the film does a better job simulating coherence as a woman's voiceover guides us between scenes. This still doesn't mean there's a plot, but at least someone's holding our hand through the stream-of-consciousness idiocy. Opening half threatens to replicate the housebound tedium of the first, going into a laborious degree of backstory about Bande and co-agent Tchernikov, who ended up defecting to the side of the Russians and is now Bande's nemesis. All this is explained over scenes of the two first having sex with one woman, then having sex with different women in different rooms, with a hammer-and-sickle flag in Tchernikov's the sole indicator of his move to Russia.
The two Russians get split up for the back half of the film, with Tchernikov joining Middle Eastern prince Amor El Sodo on his yacht to try to get him to do... something (they mostly just have sex with El Sodo's daughters). Meanwhile, the other guy joins Dr. Gode ("Dr. Dildo," a bit part wasted on the fetching Marilyn Jess) and her lesbian Amazons trying to hunt down and kill Bande, who's lounging by a pool. They all make amends during the inevitable orgy that follows.
This is again as tossed-off and low-effort as vintage porn gets - short of being shot on 16mm in a hotel room - but there are a few glimmers of interest. O. S. SEX ups the kink quotient a bit, with a partial fisting and intimations of incest between El Sodo and his daughters (the narration actually points it out explicitly, but the characterizations are so slapdash that the incident carries zero weight). The cast in general is more appealing, with Gabriel Pontello making for a marginally more attractive James Bande and Eric Dray and Pascal St. James covering stud duties (the latter with an '80s frat bro vibe that looks like a cross between Francois Papillon and that guy from the "Garbage Day" meme). Outdoor photography - much poolside - is attractive and helps the film breathe, though the lack of plot still leaves things stillborn. Even the winsome Miss Jess can't save it, wasted in what is essentially a cameo and seeming loathe to touch any of her costars. To hear her tell it in IL ETAIT UNE FOIS MARILYN JESS, by this point her increasing fear of AIDS was leading her to plan her exit from the industry, and what we're seeing here is probably one of her last roles. And if this is the way things were going, she was smart to get out when she did!
